Quotes About Hardship

When I first came out, I was a film student, and my mom sewed clothes. I was already doing a million things then, whatever it took to survive. If I had to braid someone's hair to get one pound for my lunch money, that's what I did.

Early in my career I had to be a goon to survive. I did everything I had to do and probably some things I shouldn't have.

My grandmom worked as a maid for most of her life, and she worked in the tobacco and the cotton fields, whatever she could get.

As I grew older, farms in Kentucky provided me with many jobs in hauling hay and in cutting tobacco. In addition to helping fund my college years, these jobs helped me to meet an array of very interesting and amazing men and women.

My father had four jobs every summer. He taught driver's education. He sold World Book Encyclopedias. He sold life insurance. He worked the tobacco market. From the time I was really, really small, I went with him. Obviously, I didn't get paid.

The fact that a baby can be born today and condemned to a life of hardship, struggle, and discrimination simply because of sex is enraging.

I was actually really sick of being a broke actress with a toddler, so I wrote a script.

My parents were dealing with evictions and repossessions and electricity getting shut off, and I just realized that I had to get it together.

We went to labor in the fields, my wife and I, hand in hand. Scarcely were we conscious of the fatigues of the day. Heaven always blessed our toil.

Mine is the horny hand of toil.

The working class who toil everyday to pay their rent and put food on their families' tables are tired of being lectured by the fat cats in Washington and Brussels who preach what we need and when we need it.

I never saw the light of day at Bouley. I remember I would bring home a roll of toilet paper a week because we got paid so little, if at all.

I started at Nottingham Forest cleaning toilets and scrubbing the shower floors.

Skating becomes more important to me every year. It's obviously harder as age takes a toll on the body and the brain, and I think because of that, competing becomes much more difficult. That's why those who stick around are always so appreciative of others' skating because we know how much work goes into it.

You do what I did to my body, for as long as I did, and it's bound to take its toll.

The business has taken a toll on me.

My back hurts real bad, every day. All those bumps took their toll. But life is good and I wouldn't have it any other way.

Fighting is hard, fighting is tough. You get beat up in the body. It's hard; it takes a toll on your body.

But Lucy was unmothered, as unmothered as it was possible to be, and the thing that therapist never told her, the six-months you're-so-very-resilient therapist, was that it was hard to be a mother when you had never been mothered yourself. Your children's needs remind you of your needs. Their pain reminds you of your pain. All of it reminds you of how bad it felt, how hard it was, how much you wanted and needed and didn't get. It's very hard.

Talent is a double-edged sword. What you are given is not really yours. What you work at, what you struggle for, what you have to take command of—that often makes for very good art.

We see what a punishing business it is, simply being alive.

Her face was thin, her hair was dull. Her dress was worn with use, like a servant's dress. Her eyes were wild, with tears starting in them; but beyond the tears, her gaze was hard. Hard as marble, hard as brass. Hard as a pearl, and the grit that lies inside it.

As far as I was concerned, the Depression was an ill wind that blew some good. If it hadn't occurred, my parents would have given me my college education. As it was, I had to scrabble for it.

All good is hard. All evil is easy. Dying, losing, cheating, and mediocrity is easy. Stay away from easy.